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Sunday, April 27, 2014

Disconnected

R.a.n.t. of week 04/27/14

Before I begin my r.a.n.t. for the week, let me check the date.

Yep, just as I remembered. The year is 2014, not 1984. I just wonder if all of my friends are aware of this. I've always followed along with technology. To be honest, I'd be lost without it. Does that make me a techno-nerd? Or just trying to remain connected? With all the sophisticated technology available, I'm surprised certain people don't wish to take advantage of it. Recently, one of my friends was irritated (and rightly so) when he was not informed about an event taking place to which many others were aware of.

Was the event posted to twitter, Instagram, Facebook or G+? No, it was not. Well, I may have actually said something about it on Facebook, but the "official" invite wasn't posted there. For the record, I do try to understand when a person doesn't want to get involved in various social media sites such as Facebook. Their worries may be well-founded, information posted there may one day be used against them, especially if they are ever hacked. But, in most cases, you only get 'out' of something, what you put 'in'. If you are not sharing personal photos, phone numbers and addresses, what's the harm? The benefit I see is keeping in contact with as many of your friends as possible. But I digress.

Back to my friend, we were talking about him not being informed of an event. As for the 'official' plans, they were 'group texted' to everyone. However, my friend doesn't even do text messages. As odd as that is, I have another friend who doesn't even use email. If the person isn't personally called or talked to face to face, they will have no idea what is going on. Granted, I can see the appeal of receiving a person phone call, or a visit from a friend when they have news To be honest, I love when friends stop over or call, it just doesn't happen often. But the downside of a personal phone call or visit is it takes time. If I have a party I'm planning and I know everyone receives texts, are on Facebook or has an email account, I'm more prone to going that route than going the following way:

dial 555-1516 - Hi this is John, leave a message.
2 minutes later
dial 555-4815 - "Jack, I'm calling to.... what? Yea, I heard about your trip......
35 minutes later
dial 867-5309 - "Jenny, I'm having a party. We're going to have a good time, so I thought I'd give you a call. The date is....
6 minutes later
dial 555-4223 - "May I speak with Charlie please?........ Hey, how you doing? I'm calling to invite......
21 minutes later......

So an hour has elapsed and I've reached only three of my friends and left a phone message with one. Should I call that one person back later to make sure they got the message? Yea, probably. I supposed if I want to get fancy about it and still take a lot of time, I can write out party invitations and request r.s.v.p's so they will be responsible for letting me know. Or, maybe I could do this.

No, I'm not saying everyone MUST or SHOULD get involved in social media. Neither am I saying everyone NEEDS to have text messages equipped. I understand why people might not want to do that. All I'm saying is, it's so much faster and fun. So, even though I won't hold this against someone, I may still r.a.n.t. about it a little bit.

2 comments:

Sorry, Charlie... Oh, wait, JAS, I don't text either. You could get the message out even faster by putting up posters on every utility pole (the telephones no longer use them, just the stupid electric companies, who want us to lose power during each storm)... that does not make it right.Personal invitations and interactions are worth the effort. Unless, of course, you want to deal with R2D2, Hal, and the rest of "those" personalities.

It's not so much texting I'm ranting about, but being disconnected entirely. Sure, you may not text and I do get that. But you are also accessible via FB, your blog and a few other places I'm assuming.